I didn’t know Johnathan Martin moved from Politico to the NYT, but I also don’t know who Justin Bieber is dating, or when Lady Gaga’s new album is coming out. But to hear the Republicans tell it through their JMart mouthpiece, they are hip to the kids nowadays:

At a conservative conference earlier in the year, Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader, ridiculed the 2016 Democratic field as “a rerun of ‘The Golden Girls,’ ” referring to Mrs. Clinton and Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., who is 70.

And Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin, seizing on the Fleetwood Mac song that became a Clinton family anthem, quipped to an audience in Washington, “If you want to keep thinking about tomorrow, maybe it’s time to put somebody new in.”

The 2016 election may be far off, but one theme is becoming clear: Republican strategists and presidential hopefuls, in ways subtle and overt, are eager to focus a spotlight on Mrs. Clinton’s age. The former secretary of state will be 69 by the next presidential election, a generation removed from most of the possible Republican candidates.

JMart does mention that Ronaldus Magnus was 69 when he was elected.. But because War Hero John McCain is still alive and a little sensitive about his age, JMart did him the courtesy of ignoring the uncomfortable fact that he was 72 on election day in 2008. He extended the same delicate treatment to Mitch McConnell, who is a mere 71 years young himself.

At a conservative conference earlier in the year, Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader, ridiculed the 2016 Democratic field as “a rerun of ‘The Golden Girls,’ ” referring to Mrs. Clinton and Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., who is 70.

Because nothing says, “We are the party of youth” like referencing a sitcom that aired before most of your targeted demographic was born.

The base will love this. They’re infuriated that them durn kids won’t pull up their pants, and so the GOP is going to start screaming full-time about how much they hate the olds and love the youngs (for values of “young” that start in the mid-40s).

O/T My colleague’s daughter found a kitten in a box behind a dumpster over the weekend and brought him home. She told me that she wants her daughter to bring him to the shelter and then proceeded to show me about 10 photos of the kitten sleeping in adorable poses and told me that he really likes to sleep curled up on her chest and follow her wherever she goes.

A growing number of American workers are confronting a frustrating predicament on payday: to get their wages, they must first pay a fee.

For these largely hourly workers, paper paychecks and even direct deposit have been replaced by prepaid cards issued by their employers. Employees can use these cards, which work like debit cards, at an A.T.M. to withdraw their pay.

But in the overwhelming majority of cases, using the card involves a fee. And those fees can quickly add up: one provider, for example, charges $1.75 to make a withdrawal from most A.T.M.’s, $2.95 for a paper statement and $6 to replace a card. Some users even have to pay $7 inactivity fees for not using their cards.

Yes Republicans, as you gather in your knee britches and tricorn hats and powdered wigs to outlaw gay marriage and teaching evolution in the public schools, I eagerly await hearing how modern and up to date you are.

Who wins if 2016 turns out to be a contest between:
– a nice, but tough old lady
vs.
– an abrasively nasty fat man.

I realize we have some folks in this forum who are a bit sensitive about prejudice toward um, people of weight, but my bet is that fat prejudice, at least among the electorate outside New Jersey, trumps old prejudice (in terms of which is the more potent negative against the candidate with that trait). That is, unless the side with the grossly overweight standard-bearer succeeds in coupling the older opponent’s age with lack of competence. Which is probably why the GOP is so obsessed with pushing the Bengazi thing.

@PeakVT: I’d settle of 2015 or late 2014… but of course, in the fantasyland that is the Village, the 2016 race started sometime around November 4, 2012 (yes, I’m fully aware that the election was actually on November 6).

Hillary’s age would be less of an issue if she hadn’t already had some non-trivial health problems during her term as SoS. On the other hand, if we’re going to talk about age and health concerns, Chris Christie at age 50 and 300+ lbs looks like he’s one cheeseburger away from his first infarction.

OT from the Zimmerman trial, audio of his police interview
“Did you recognize him?”

“I don’t know, they always come at night”

Who’s “they”, Kemosabe? Also, he says he got out of his car to get the name of the street, the street that cuts through “my neighborhood”, by the dog run where “I walk my dog”, but he didn’t know the name of the street.

I realize we have some folks in this forum who are a bit sensitive about prejudice toward um, people of weight, but my bet is that fat prejudice, at least among the electorate outside New Jersey, trumps old prejudice,

Fat and jovial might make him an endearing character. Fat + New York rude doesn’t go over very well outside the East Coast media establishment.

You can count on right-wing media from now on frequently showing photos of Hillary Clinton, touched up in Photoshop to highlight every wrinkle in her skin (particularly around the eyes) and generally make her look like she’s a sleep-deprived geezer.

Also, he says he got out of his car to get the name of the street, the street that cuts through “my neighborhood”, by the dog run where “I walk my dog”, but he didn’t know the name of the street.

I actually have no trouble believing that. I couldn’t tell you the names of all the streets in my neighborhood, even though I go through it plenty often enough. I have a harder time if I’m driving through an area where I normally walks or if I’m there at an unusual time of day.

@SiubhanDuinne: Because it’s not the employer, strictly speaking that is charging the fees. It’s the bank. Essentially your employer is choosing where you bank. I mean, if there’s a clearer example of why we need the CFPB than this, I’m hard pressed to think of it.

From the “Silver linings” file, as we get closer to 2016, we can count on the Right Wing Outrage Machine to focus less on Obama and more on whomever they think will be the Dem nominee. So we might see the end of the Birthers!

@Gin & Tonic: Disagree. The people that are held up as role models are skinny celebrities. People want their representatives to look healthy and fat doesn’t look healthy. Doesn’t matter what they themselves and their fellow Wal-Marters look like. Electing a President is electing the Head of State. He or She needs to look and seem healthy.

You see it’s because young kids are so easily fooled. Sure you keep screwing them with student loan rate hikes, saying tough sh!t when they complain about the ridiculous debt and soft job market, and calling them generally lazy when they complain about how late stage capitalism is screwing them, but the real issue is that their candidate was too old.
Somehow that’s the takeaway that their party came up with.

@cmorenc: I haven’t really understood the thing against older women (only in a rhetorical sense, it’s once again used by some men to keep themselves in power). If Betty White asked me to marry her, I would have to turn her down, not because I’m married, but because I don’t think I could keep up with her.

It’s nothing directly to do with Clinton’s age, but it bothered me a bit that when Clinton stopped being SoS the spin pushed by the MSM was that she was exhausted after her Herculean efforts flying around the world a gazillion times, week in, week out.

The general consensus is that she did a pretty good job as SoS, but apparently she had to work herself to exhaustion to get there. I am not sure that would be a desirable quality in a President. A 70+ year old President (or anyone else of that age) constantly working 12 hour days is as likely to be a liability as an asset.

Not sure who Sen. Yertle has in mind as the fresh young faces of the Grand Old Party. Most of them already self-destructed during the 2012 primary season. Even if they can hork up a new one, (s)he would have play to the loonies during the primary season, which would certainly bite back during the general election.

@Violet: Last night, there was a story about it, and that both sides of the aisle were hearing about it from their constituents. They were going to do something when they got back from the break, the story said. Probably something along the lines of “The Democrats won’t let us lower student loan rates and save money by outlawing abortion.”

Regarding the workers being paid with ATM cards… that’s just what VA and other states have done with unemployment compensation. The EPPI card is issued instead of checks. And yeah, they charge every damn fee they can.

A few years ago, the state used Wachovia. In 2008, I was unemployed for a while. I would usually just go to a branch and withdraw the entire amount of the weekly payout at once. I’d then deposit it in my credit union.

Personally, I’m still mad that VA (and other states, as well) has the nerve to tax unemployment.

It’s the same old crap from the Republicans. Women will vote for Palin because she’s a woman. Blacks will vote for Cain because he’s black. Hispanics will vote for Rubio because he’s Hispanic. Now, young people will vote for our guys because they’re young. No, GOP, those groups won’t vote for your candidates, regardless of their gender, age, ethnicity, or color, because your policies suck.

@c: Nor do they seem to think working that hard at that age is a problem for the rest of us, so long as we’re stocking shelves, etc and not expecting anything but smaller SS benefits, we lazy moochers.

The GOP knows that Romney (65 when he ran), McCain (72), Dole (73) and Poppy Bush (68) all got their heads handed to them, so they’re just warning us. Compared to that crowd, Dubya looks like a College Republican.

Personally, I’m still mad that VA (and other states, as well) has the nerve to tax unemployment.

The goal is to make you so miserable that you’ll stop being picky and take any shit job you can find. And if it doesn’t pay enough to live on, then f*** you, should have become an investment banker if you wanted a living wage.

Someone has probably already pointed this out, but another angle for why the Golden Girls barb was stupid is that young people love Betty White because she’s hilarious. And would vote for her for president over any of the feudalist assholes the GOP would nominate.

@Lurking Canadian: Even though in many cases the US people are stupid, they recognized in 2008 that McCain would govern like a pundit, which is what he had become, not as someone actually responsible for policy. Pundits are only seemingly popular, a deeper look shows them to be uniquely unsuited to actual governing.

@c:
Pundits are only popular with each other. Since they hire each other, this gives them enormous job continuity and no reason to change. Their ratings keep slipping further and further into oblivion, however, and their attempts to define what the Average American thinks are less and less effective.

Serino: Well the law of the physics says that he’s hiding from you at this point. He could not have made it home…and came back to attack you in that time, so…What’s your, what’s your, um, account is that you don’t see him at this point. You’re at the T now, right? Here’s the pavement, correct? You’re looking down that way? That passage?
Zimmerman: No, sir.
Serino: Where’re you at?
Zimmerman: Once he told me not to follow him…
Serino: Mm hmm.
Zimmerman: And I wasn’t following him. I was just going in the same direction he was. Once he said…
Serino: That’s following (laughs).

It’s just really important to Zimmerman that he not be following Martin. In the first interview he spends a lot of time saying how he was out of the car to look for a street sign, not following, looking. Then it changes to “walking through to check if he (Martin) was still there” then this, “going in the same direction”

Singleton: OK, but the other day…again, this is, these are the questions that we’re going to have to able to explain to people…
Zimmerman: Yes, ma’am.
Singleton: The other day you told me you got out of the car because dispatch was asking your location and you wanted to orient yourself. You did not tell me that you said, “Oh, shit, he’s running” and then got out of the car and went in that same direction at the same time. Do you see what the problem is?
Zimmerman: Yes, ma’am.
Singleton: And I asked you did, would you, did you, you know, look for him and you told me no.
Zimmerman: I don’t remember, ma’am. I’m sorry.
Singleton: You told me the only, the reason you got out of your car was to get an address.
Zimmerman: Yes, right.
Singleton: But you decided to get the address…fresh in the second after you say, “Oh, shit, he’s running.” And then it sounds like you’re running too.

“these are the questions that we’re going to have to able to explain to people…”

At a conservative conference earlier in the year, Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader, ridiculed the 2016 Democratic field as “a rerun of ‘The Golden Girls,’ ” referring to Mrs. Clinton and Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., who is 70.

Bytches, Bette White has moved on to Hot in Cleveland.

Golden Girls is a reference only those who watch the reruns on Lifetime will get.

As I said on the previous thread on this subject, young people think anyone over 40 is old. It won’t make a difference if a 50s something Rand Paul or Chris Christie is up against a 69 year old Hillary Clinton; to a first time 19 year old voter they are all old. What will matter to this 19 year old is the cost of her student loans, access to health care, including contraceptives, and the fact a woman is running at the top of one of the tickets.

Let me start by saying that if Hilary is nominated, I will work for her, vote for her, and donate money.

That said, I hope she doesn’t run. We need to build up our bench, which is actually pretty good. We have a great group of younger Dems who I think would be excellent in office and wouldn’t bring the baggage Hilary does. I am a few years younger than she is – just a few – so I am of her generation. I’ve always liked and supported her – though since I don’t live in New York, I couldn’t vote for her – but we need someone younger to run. Because it’s not the 2016 election, it’s the one in 2020 when she’d run to reelection.

Again, that said, if she gets the nomination, I’ll work my tail off to get her elected. Does that make sense?

@Forum Transmitted Disease:
Hell, I assumed he was in his 80’s. I’m older than that and he looks like he could be my father (if, of course, my father was a shriveled up old white man with no neck). He wasn’t on all counts.
Come to think of it, my father has been dead over 40 years and he probably still looks better than McConnell.